The present invention relates to data center infrastructure, and more particularly, this invention relates to a scalable distributed control plane for network switching systems.
As the size of a physical networking system increases (e.g., number of ports, an aggregation of multiple ports, multiple physical networking systems used to simulate a larger physical networking system, number of network control protocols, etc.), the requirements and demands made on a control plane for the network (which contains processors, buses, I/O, and other associated resources across many different physical entities) also increase. However, typically a control plane may have limited physical capabilities and is limited to a single switching component in the network. Therefore, each control plane would be incapable of scaling to the degree necessary to handle all demands made thereof when the size of a physical networking system increases to a certain degree.
Therefore, there is a need for improved control plane capabilities, particularly capabilities for scaling up to handle additional control packet processing capabilities that are required in a fast and large networking system.